Im sitting outside having a beer, the sun is turning my skin a Beautiful shade of pink and it got me thinking. How does that heat travel here but if I go up even a mile in the sky it’s freezing? Surely the heat travels directly from the sun to earth and anything in that path would be destroyed, such as satellites? Help
In: Physics
Space isn’t cold, for the reason you’ve listed.
One of the harder problems with space travel is actually figuring out how to keep things cool. Things like the ISS, or the old space shuttle had radiators built into them to help keep them cool. The space suits that are worn for spacewalks have liquid cooling built into them in order keep the astronaut from overheating from body heat.
Space is not a vacuum, but a near vacuum. As the heat travels through the near vacuum, the molecules are to thinly arranged to transfer much direct heat. The heat becomes more immediate as the air thickens and the molecule are gathered more closely. Also worth noting that without the acoustic dampening of space the sun would be deafening.
Also the atmosphere traps a lot of heat, making the job of direct sunlight much easier. Unlike mercury where the direct sunlight is more than adequate.
The vacuum of space. You are feeling air particles that are a thin layer of gases heated by almost constant sunlight. That said, you are right about the heat of the sun affecting satellites, which is why they are designed to withstand the dramatic range of temperatures between empty space and sunlight.
The Webb satellite for example has solar plating on one side and is designed to rotate to always keep that side pointed at the sun, keeping internal components hundreds of degrees colder right on the other side of some gold plating.
That heat is not heat when it’s traveling to earth, it’s high intensity light from the sun that becomes heat as it gets absorbed by particles in the atmosphere/on the earth’s surface.
There is virtually no matter in outer space to absorb that light and convert it to heat, which is why it’s able to get all the way to earth and warm everything up.
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